Only Exception
by TheNightmirage
Summary: Oneshot. Songfic. Zoey and Louis share a tender moment of understanding during their watch. Z/L heavily implied. Takes places right before the beginning of Dead Air. Rated T for minor language.


"C'mon, Zoey, get up. It's your turn to take over the watch." Zoey opened one bleary eye and glared at the fuzzy figure of the biker who was shaking her into consciousness.

"Mmm tired," she muttered, raising a weary hand to her face.

"Yeah, me too. So lemme get some sleep, and you take over the watch with Louis." His shaking of her arm grew more frustrated until she finally sat up.

"I'm up!" she snapped, groggily feeling around for her hunting rifle. Her fingers soon found the cold metallic, and she was once again reminded of everything that sleep had allowed her to escape from for a few hours. Her parents were dead. Most everyone was Infected with the so-called Green Flu. She was stuck traveling around in search of rescue with three men she had known for a grand total of about six days. _Shit_.

She settled herself into the corner nearest the greenhouse stairwell, nodded at Louis who seemed as keen to take over the watch as she was, and blinked furiously to keep herself from falling back asleep.

" 'Morning," Louis mumbled.

"Yeah." They both watched Francis and Bill as they settled into the two makeshift beds set up in the corner farthest from the entrance. The two men's exhaustion was evident-Francis's snores sounded from amid the heap of blankets within a matter of minutes, and Bill didn't move once he had laid down.

Zoey's sleepy thoughts soon drifted to her parents as they were apt to do these days. She would not let herself reflect on their deaths because she knew if she did she would break down and never recover. She forced herself to think of happier times with them-after all, the whole optimism thing seemed to work well for Louis. After a few moments of musing on hazy memories of fair-grounds viewed from atop her father's shoulders and picnics in Allegheny National Park with her mother, it occurred to her that none of these memories included _both_ of her parents.

Carolyn and Wade Inobinet's marriage had been characterized by constant bickering: over the dangers and low pay of his job as a police officer, over daycare for Zoey when she was tiny, over anything really. Yet it had still been a traumatic shock to Zoey when they had decided to separate when she was eleven because although they had all seen it coming, none of them truly expected it to ever really happen. Her mother's subsequent relationship with that lawyer, Kevin, had caused only further strain. Wade sunk into depression, convinced that the man his ex-wife chose to live with after him was his superior, and Zoey had moved into the dinky apartment with him out of pity.

"_When I was younger I saw my daddy cry  
And curse at the wind  
He broke his own heart  
And I watched  
As he tried to reassemble it  
And my momma swore that  
She would never let herself forget  
And that was the day that I promised I'd never sing of love  
If it does not exist"_

The steady _ta-chck ta-chck ta-chck _of the shotgun shells sliding into the chamber was oddly comforting to Louis. At least it meant he was doing something, _truly doing something_, for the first time in several years. The three people in the room with him needed him-not to tell them to reboot their computer and read what came up on the blue screen-but to survive. It was nice to be needed.

After all, who had ever needed him before these three? Of course his mother loved him but she certainly did not mean to have him out of wedlock at the end of her junior year of high school. The people who called the IT Department whining about lost files and frozen computers hadn't needed him-they could call anyone else or maybe they could have even thought to look in their computer's Troubleshooting Guide just one damn time. And Michelle had might it quite clear she didn't need him at all.

Louis refused to admit that he was cynical about anything, but he was amazed at how his ex-fiancee's infidelities still stung his pride three years later. Amazed at how someone could blatantly disrespect the very person they claimed to love. And amazed at how someone had come into his life to change his mind about it being okay to need someone else during the _goddamn zombie apocalypse _of all times.

"_Maybe I know, somewhere  
Deep in my soul  
That love never lasts  
And we've got to find other ways  
To make it alone  
Keep a straight face  
And I've always lived like this  
Keeping a comfortable, distance  
And up until now I had sworn to myself that  
I'm content with loneliness _

_Because none of it was ever worth the risk"_

"What are you thinking about?" The question cut across the silence like a knife, and Zoey gave a start at its sudden intrusion into the quiet. She looked over at Louis who looked surprised that he had even asked this.

"Life," she told him honestly. "Life before all this. The life I'm not ready to give up just yet. You?"

"The life I want to make after all this is over."

"It include me?" She was joking, of course. She half expected her three companions to abandon her as soon as things returned to a shadow of normalcy, and the idea scared her more than anything ever had.

"Of course."

"_Well, you, are, the only exception  
You, are, the only exception  
You, are, the only exception  
You, are, the only exception"_

"You think this will all really ever be over? I mean, even if the zombies are wiped out...what about all the people who have died?"

"I don't know," Louis admitted.

"Even if this does die out nothing is ever going to be _normal _again," Zoey continued. "And that's the worst part. Even if we finally do reach a safe zone and the zombies all...do they die?...everyone who is left can pretend that everything will go back to the way it was, but it won't." There was a moment of silence between them in which Louis struggled to find some words of comfort.

"At least we'll all have each other," he finally concluded sheepishly.

"You would say that," Zoey replied. Her response wasn't bitter. In fact if anything, it sounded skeptical.

"You don't believe me."

"_I've got a tight grip on reality  
But I can't  
Let go of what's in front of me here  
I know you're leaving  
In the morning, when you wake up  
Leave me with some kind of proof it's not a dream"_

"It's not that I don't want to-"

"We're a family now, Zoey. Nothing's gonna change that."

A shrill cry sounded somewhere in the distance-no doubt the wail of enraged Infected. The sound of even more distant gunfire followed, and the Infected's roar two forces clashed audibly, going back and forth like the crashing rise and ebb of a wave. Louis found his body involuntarily half scuttled and half crawled toward Zoey when the distinct roar of a Tank split the air, and the gunfire grew weaker and weaker until it finally sputtered out. The eerie silence that followed the defeat of some distant survivors made something inside Louis's very soul ache.

"What if that's us next time?" Zoey whispered, afraid to speak louder in the impossible event the Tank might hear her too.

"It won't be," Louis insisted. "We've got each other, and we've gotten through much worse than a Tank. Like a helicopter crash."

"And the Slaters kicking us off the boat," Zoey added.

"Yeah, and remember the Witch that Bill pissed off that you shot square in the face when she was running toward him?" She shook the compliment off.

"And the sewers downtown-ugh."

"Hey, I still say that smell was Francis." They glanced at each other and laughed. Their laughter was cut short by an irritated _harumph _from Bill whose light sleep had been interrupted by their joy.

"Sorry!" Zoey hissed, clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle her giggles.

"_You, are, the only exception  
You, are, the only exception  
You, are, the only exception  
You, are, the only exception"_

Neither of them spoke much for the next few hours, afraid to wake Bill whose cigarette supply was running dangerously low, and, therefore, had a much lower tolerance for "You three's bullshit".

The last rays of sunlight faded over the horizon which meant they should get going soon. Louis reached for his assault rifle and began to wearily stumble to his feet. Zoey grabbed his hand as he stood.

"What's up?" he asked.

"I want to hear more about your plans for life after all this on our next watch."

"Um...alright."

"And especially how it involves me." They smiled at each other.

"You got it."

_And I'm on my way to believing  
Oh, and I'm on my way to believing_


End file.
